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GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) - Police searched cars and buses leaving this city in northwestern Haiti Saturday for 159 prisoners who escaped after gunmen drove a tractor through the wall of a prison to free a jailed political activist.

Police fled Gonaives after the jailbreak Friday, and residents locked themselves in their homes as automatic gunfire rang in the streets. People burned down city hall and the courthouse, and authorities acknowledged they had lost control of the town.

On Saturday, police returned with reinforcements and restored calm. Officers were patrolling the streets and searching vehicles for escaped prisoners on the southbound highway from Gonaives to Port-au-Prince, about 60 miles away. Gonaives has about 200,000 people.

Government officials said the purpose of the prison assault was to free Amiot Metayer, a former ally of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who turned against the president after he was jailed July 2 on charges of burning down houses of a rival gang. He blamed Aristide for his arrest.

Metayer was seen Friday parading through Gonaives with his supporters, an armed group calling themselves the Cannibal Army.

His supporters had been demanding his release for weeks, blocking traffic with flaming tire barricades and setting fire to the Customs House in Gonaives on July 8.

The violence and initial police abandonment of Gonaives was another indication of the growing chaos enveloping the hemisphere's poorest nation, mired in a two-year political impasse over fraudulent elections that has blocked international aid.

``Disorder has taken possession of the country,'' human rights advocate and former culture minister Jean-Claude Bajeux said Friday.

The gunmen used a stolen tractor to ram their way through the prison wall, said Clifford Larose, director of Haiti's prison system. One prisoner was shot and killed inside the jail by the attackers.

Larose said 159 of the 221 inmates got away. They were not wearing prison uniforms, allowing them to quickly blend in with the population, authorities said.

According to an Organization of American States report, Metayer had participated in past attacks on Aristide's opponents, including a Dec. 17 assault on the residence of politician Luc Mesadieu in Gonaives - a day when Aristide supporters all over Haiti attacked opposition offices and homes.

Mesadieu's assistant, Ramy Daran, was doused with gasoline and burned to death. Mesadieu said he saw Metayer giving the order to kill Daran.

At least 10 people died in that day's violence, which Aristide claims was sparked by an attempt to overthrow the government and assassinate him. But the OAS has disagreed with that explanation, lending support to opposition claims the Dec. 17 coup was staged. The opposition says it was a pretext to clamp down on dissidents.

Ironically, among the prisoners who broke free Friday were former soldiers convicted in the 1994 killings of suspected pro-Aristide civilians in Gonaives' seaside shantytown of Raboteau, in a hunt for Metayer.